Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed a flourish of paperwork last Thursday creating a brand-new bureaucracy he christened the “Office of Gun Violence Reduction.” By the time the weekend was over, his city had counted three people dead and fifteen shot. You could not script the irony if you tried.
Per Fox News, Chicago police data from 5 p.m. Friday to 5 a.m. Monday logged three killed and fifteen wounded across the city, the victims ranging in age from 17 to 57. It was, grimly, an improvement — the previous Juneteenth weekend left six dead. In Chicago, three murders now passes for a quiet weekend.
The timing is what stings. “Less than two hours after Johnson’s executive order was signed last week,” Fox reported, “Chicago police said two people were killed after an unknown suspect opened fire.” Two male victims, the police report noted, “were discovered in the rear of a residence with multiple gunshot wounds to the body.” The ink on the mayor’s anti-violence office was barely dry.
Johnson, naturally, framed the order as proof of his resolve. “From day one in office, my number one priority has been driving down violence and breaking the cycles of trauma and despair which have disrupted the lives of countless Chicagoans,” he said, promising the new office would bring “together every tool at our disposal to save lives and build safer communities.” Every tool, apparently, except the police, the prosecutors, and the bail policies that actually keep shooters off the street.
This is the progressive governing model in miniature: when the crime numbers won’t cooperate, create a department. Give it a hopeful name, stage the signing, issue the press release — and let the bodies pile up on the same streets the next weekend. A new “office” doesn’t arrest anyone. It doesn’t hold a single trigger-puller accountable. It exists to give the mayor something to point at while his constituents bury their kids.
Fox says it reached out to Johnson and Gov. JB Pritzker “on multiple occasions” about the bloodshed and had not heard back. Of course not. The people running Chicago have learned that a ribbon-cutting plays better than a reckoning. The residents living through the gunfire — from 17 years old to 57 — deserve a mayor who fights crime instead of rebranding it.
Source: foxnews.com